


Luminous Beings Are We

by ThePsuedonym



Category: Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Force Ghosts, M/M, Prompt Fill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-05
Updated: 2017-05-05
Packaged: 2018-10-28 05:59:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,671
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10825200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThePsuedonym/pseuds/ThePsuedonym
Summary: The dragon had crawled out of his heart and sank into his bones, stretched wings and limbs into flesh, breathed smoke and fire into his blood. It filled the space that he had once occupied, love and fear and joy and despair replaced by rage and anger and hatred.If he still had a body, Anakin suspected that he might have retched.





	Luminous Beings Are We

**Author's Note:**

  * For [minhui](https://archiveofourown.org/users/minhui/gifts), [peskylilcritter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/peskylilcritter/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Talking to the dead](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8299936) by [peskylilcritter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/peskylilcritter/pseuds/peskylilcritter). 



> I have no self-control. None. A friend directed me towards minhui's prompt (which I didn't even fill properly) and peskylilcritter’s _Talking to the dead_ and I just. Couldn’t control myself. Gah.

Two hours.

As of now they were only two hours out from Mustafar, where Palpatine’s apprentice had been ordered to root out the remaining dregs of the Separatists’ leadership – left floundering when its head, Dooku, had been killed; outright caught in pathetic death throes now that Grievous had followed him into the pale.

Clinically Padmé thought that the act was excessively dramatic, but that would have been the point, wouldn’t it? To both ensure that the galaxy at large knew the power he had at his disposal, to ensure that said power remained loyal to his hand and his hand alone.

Personally, she felt sickened.

One hand resting on the curve of her distended stomach, Padmé paced as nervously as she could within the confines of her quarters, limited by the fact that the room had not been designed with such a space consuming action in mind. Nor were matters helped by See-Threepio’s presence, who had been heartlessly banished into his mistress’ room after trapping himself in the skiff’s tiny galley. For the third time. (In an hour.) He was shut down now, thankfully, or else he would have relentlessly, uselessly twittered over her as she meticulously wore a hole into the floor.

Perhaps it wasn’t quite healthy for her to be moving around so much in the late stages of her pregnancy, to be so _agitated_ – she could feel the child moving anxiously inside of her, just as ready for it to all be over – but at that given moment she couldn’t give so much as a kriff about it. Stillness led her to think, thinking meant remembering and remembering meant becoming violently ill in the ‘fresher; even skirting around the subject she felt the unwelcome, acidic hint of bile painting her throat.

It tasted like morning sickness.

-

Once he had entered the planet’s coordinates into the navcomputer and the strips of space visible outside the skiff had blurred into nauseating streaks of light that made Padmé’s stomach flip rebelliously, Obi-Wan had taken her hands and steered into the cockpit, sat her down in the copilot’s seat and ensured that she was comfortable before telling her everything.

Everything: the clones, the Temple, _everything_. Dispassionately. Mechanically. If she hadn’t known otherwise, hadn’t seen the truth for herself, Padmé would have believed the Jedi before her to be as detached as the Order and its Code demanded he be.

She retracted her hands and dropped them into her lap, resolutely denied the maternal instinct that demanded they settle onto her stomach just so she could feel the calming flutter of life inside her. Refused to think of the children Obi-Wan had spoken of, now cradled by the Force. How Padawans, Knights and Masters alike had been methodically slaughtered in a fashion reminiscent of that reserved for unthinking animals.

Genocide.

“I don’t understand.” Her voice didn’t rise above a whisper, seemed unable to gain strength in the wake of that terrible revelation. It was not the actions nor the immediate result that escaped her understanding – after the last three years of war and her occasional intimate role in it, it would be impossible for her not to – but the reasoning behind it. Anakin would never—

“How could he do those things?” Those horrible, horrible things, oh Ani.

“That was not Anakin,” Obi-Wan responded.

Cold and heat swiftly flashed through her, the initial blankness of surprise giving way to explanation after explanation. Denial was discarded, as was the possibility of a mind trick (never seen, only heard of).

The Jedi was placid in his words, infuriatingly so; he could have been commenting on the weather on Coruscant for all the emotion he exuded. Padmé wondered, for a single horribly sickening moment if all of the feelings that she had witnessed him express – if everything she _hadn’t_ seen – had been nothing more than a lie. Then she chastised herself for doubting him, a flicker of self-disappointment guiltily worming its way through her. Obi-Wan was grieving, just as she was. Everyone dealt with grief in their own ways, however (un)healthy.

It didn’t make her want to smack him any less.

He must have sensed her anger (she forgot, sometimes, that they could do that; Anakin was so bright and loud himself that it was easy, disturbingly so to disassociate him with the Order he had sworn himself to,) because he set his hands on her own once more. Placating, reassuring.

His intent and her guilt were not enough to prevent her from hissing back at him, however, with admittedly more venom in her words than she had intended to inject; the stress was truly getting to her now.

“That is our _husband_ you are referring to! He may have—” And here words failed her, tongue tripping in disbelief. “—have done _that_ , but we are still married. He,” and oh, how it hurt to say it aloud, “is still Anakin.”

“Padmé.”

For the second time in as many minutes she forcefully yanked her hands away from him; now she stood, angry with him, angry with Anakin, angry with herself and Palpatine and the entire kriffing war. She had three years of pent up fury, frustration and disappointment to shell out and hell, she was far from lacking in targets. Yet she couldn’t utilize any of them – while it might be satisfying in the short term to rip into Obi-Wan, it would still be wrong to do so for so many reasons (that he was grieving at least as much (more, so much more) than she was only the tip of the mountain), not to mention that she was far from stupid – and forced herself to settle for stalking out of the open cockpit, unable to escape her companion’s soothing words had she even the desire to try.

Where would she go, exactly? Where _could_ she go? Back to the Senate that had gleefully handed over its freedom to the very man that had orchestrated the war that had ripped the galaxy apart at the seams, had ordered the deaths of hundreds of thousands in his play for power? Back to the husband who had seemingly lost his mind and _carried out_ the deaths of hundreds at the whim of a tyrant not even thirty hours previous? Back to the planet that the tyrant called home, where her clueless family lived without so much as a scrap of knowledge of her secret tryst?

Padmé Amidala was not a woman to run away from her problems, had always, or at the least endeavored to face them head on; but that didn’t mean she had to be sitting in the copilot’s chair of a slightly illegally modified star skiff (courtesy of that aforementioned husband), either.

The cockpit opened directly into the galley and she passed into the not-quite-a-room, simply eager to put a modicum of space between them.

“You misunderstand me,” he tried again, tired voice carrying easily through the dead air. Padmé glared at him and continued walking deeper into the skiff, never failing to exit direct sight of the pilot’s chair. And not for lack of trying, either. The skiff wasn’t so large that she wouldn’t be able to hear him regardless of where she went. “Anakin is no longer inside that body; Palpatine had used the Dark Side of the Force to, to _push_ him out, so to speak.”

That made Padmé stop cold and, for the first time since he had intercepted her at her apartment on Coruscant, really, _truly_ looked at the normally articulate Jedi. Obi-Wan, who looked just as weary as she felt. It had been an old joke between them, once, that Anakin would age his former Master prematurely, but only now did she see that he truly did appear several decades wearier than he had any real right to. There were lines cutting into Obi-Wan’s face that belonged on a man twice his age, a deep slump to his shoulders that bespoke of the ache and break of a devastatingly hard life.

All of this in the span of. Of. She didn’t know how long, really, everything had been wearing down on him. Them. Everyone. The Jedi and Republic alike. She managed to force herself to return to the copilot seat and face him fully, to take in all the evidence of his struggles.

“And how would you know this?”

Even to her own ears her voice sounded distant and hollow, almost unfeeling in the wake of her revelations. This time she took his hands in hers, only now felt the chill in his skin. Absently she wondered if he had been taking care of himself since Utapau. Anything to keep herself from thinking her thoughts, how she wouldn’t be able to, simply incapable of handling herself if he gave the incorrect response.

Her eyes met his own; they were dark. Haunted, hunted. “He told me himself.”

-

The dragon had crawled out of his heart and sank into his bones, stretched wing and limb into his flesh, breathed smoke and fire into his blood. It filled the space that he had once occupied, love and fear and joy and despair replaced by rage and anger and hatred.

If he still had a body, Anakin suspected that he might have retched.

As it stood, he didn’t, it currently being occupied by something that he had systematically denied for some thirteen years now. Looking at himself he didn’t recognize his face, his body as it knelt before the unveiled Sith and accepted its new name.

Neither of whom looked over at him, now. He was as good as gone so far as they were concerned, once Palpatine (who he had trusted who had believed in him _look at where it had gotten him now_ ) had done… _something_. Perhaps, to the best of their knowledge, had ceased to exist.

When Anakin had found Palpatine dueling Mace Windu, their respective red and violet blades unveiled, saw the carnage wrought and the corpses of the other Councilors lying discarded and cooling on the floor, he had realized that Palpatine had been but playing with the Jedi Master (it couldn’t have been more than five minutes; _three Masters dead in five minutes_ , he thought, the words looping around in his mind, _three Masters dead in five minutes_ ; one hundred seconds per Master) and had ignited his saber to assist him, however useless as the gesture may have been.

Next thing he had known was that Windu was gone, the Dark Side was curling around him possessively, almost hungrily and Palpatine was looming over everything, far, far too tall; there was a hand pressed to his chest, the guttural roar of a krayt dragon filling his ears and then—

Then—

Here they were.

He listened, his body, being, whatever kind of existence he was currently cursed with entirely numb and paralyzed with shock, as Palpatine ordered his new apprentice Darth Vader (he was him, that was _his body_ ) to take command of the five-oh-first. To prove his loyalty to his new Master and destroy the Jedi.

Absent a lightsaber, which had, unfortunately, not passed with him into wherever he was now, Anakin threw himself at the pair; to stop them, to take his body back from himself, to stop the swift descent into madness the galaxy seemed to be spiraling into…

And passed right through them. Vader simply stalked off, unperturbed, while Palpatine watched his new apprentice go with sickly yellow eyes.

(and what could he do but watch as him- _but-not-him_ destroyed the Order that had (reluctantly, oh so reluctantly) taken him in, watch and beg and plead and threat _uselessly_ as he tore mercilessly through younglings and adults alike, wander through the carnage like the ghosts of the dead he passed)

It is less by design than by accident that he eventually overheard Vader’s orders – to go wherever the remaining Separatist leaders had holed themselves up and end them – and it’s even less unintentional than purposeful that he didn’t follow. There wasn’t any point to anything anymore, not when he couldn’t stop his own karking body from murdering children. And it goes without saying that he’s not certain he can go into hyperspace, either, let alone even climb into a starship.

He had run all the way to the Temple, which was admittedly not far from the Chancellor’s office, but not proof that he could even get off Coruscant. Where would he even go, anyways, but to see even more blood and death? He’d already had three years filled with nothing but, three years that would have been richer for their absence.

He’s not entirely sure how long he had been haunting the Temple when they came, but it was long enough for the clones on duty to remove their armor, stash it away and don Jedi robes in its stead. Under other circumstances he would have wondered why they bothered doing so – it wouldn’t be enough to fool even an Initiate for more than a few moments – but at the moment, he wasn’t too keen on examining their actions very closely. The answer is rather clear, he’s certain, but it didn’t bear thinking about, particularly when there was nothing he could do to alter it.

What with his wandering it hadn’t taken Anakin very long to lose himself in the sprawling lower portions of the Temple and the cadavers littered across its halls. At some point the faces had begun indiscriminately blurring together, indistinguishable save for the deceased’s species, quite often not even then. Several times he walked through the same halls, passing the same Knights and Masters who had either dropped to the ground or had propped themselves against a wall or some other protrusion in their last moments, killed by ‘saber or blaster bolt.

He thought it might’ve been the fourth or fifth time he passed by the control center when he saw them, the holo they were watching. Heard Obi-Wan’s voice, pained and grieving as he shut it off; Anakin’s heart broke right along with it.

He stood in the open doorway, unashamedly fixated on his former Master – it wasn’t like they could see him, anyways; at least his non-existence came with _some_ benefits – and wished that he could take the man’s pain away. Focused as he was on the other Human, he failed to notice how Yoda’s gaze seemed to settle directly on him, hadn’t seen the narrowing of the diminutive Jedi’s eyes.

The sound of a lightsaber igniting made him startle (and could he be blamed? given everything that had happened as of late he was beginning to associate it with Bad Things,) and turn towards the source, instinctively reaching for his own non-existent weapon.

When a blade of blue light joined the green he held up his empty hands and backed up a step, a little surprised and elated to _finally_ be seen, albeit far too late to make any difference. Usual Skywalker luck and all.

“Vader,” Obi-Wan greeted, too cold and composed to be natural, a far cry from the anguish he had witnessed only moments before. Yoda said nothing, watching from the sidelines with guarded eyes. Clearly he had decided this was a matter to be settled between the two of them.

“Obi-Wan.” Anakin deigned to respond with a touch more feeling, reigned in just enough that the other man wouldn’t be overwhelmed. Not that he feared that would be a problem; his Master’s icy glare made Orto Plutonia seem warm as Tatooine by comparison. “Let me explain—”

“There isn’t anything to explain,” Obi-Wan fired back. “You Fell, accepted Palpatine as your Master and destroyed the Jedi on his orders.”

“No, I didn’t. I mean, I did, but—”

“Then why, Anakin?” And damn if that devastated tone of voice just didn’t do him in. (And he hadn’t done anything to deserve it, really; he’d had his body snatched from him, after all.)

“Just let me explain, it’s – it’s complicated. Weird. Complicatedly weird.”

Anakin was babbling now, he knew he was, but that didn’t matter so much as Obi-Wan seemed less inclined to run his former Padawan through with his lightsaber, even if he didn’t seem so likely to put it away, either. Just because Anakin couldn’t touch anyone didn’t mean he couldn’t be hurt, nor was he eager to test that theory so soon.

“How so?”

He inhaled deeply; this was it. “Let me show you, first.”

And ignoring how the immediate tensing of the two Jedi made his heart shatter again, Anakin marched forward and made a grab for Obi-Wan’s hand. The elder man flinched with surprise as Anakin passed through him insubstantially, visibly suppressing the instinctive reaction as he demonstrated a second time to prove that it had not been a trick of the light nor the Force.

“How?” Obi-Wan echoed, voice low and soft, disengaging his weapon. Beside them Yoda did the same, his expression revealing as stone.

“Before the, the _everything_ ,” he began, waving a hand around to indicate the carnage the clones had left behind, “Palpatine had revealed himself to me as the Sith. He, he let me go, I don’t know why. I told Master Windu because you,” here he pointedly looked to Yoda, “were still on Kashyyyk helping the Wookies; he took, um.”

He closed his eyes to try and assist his recollection; he hadn’t studied the dead Masters in Palpatine’s office very closely and now, hours, perhaps days after the details were graying with the aftermath of it all. “Masters Fisto, Kolar and Tiin. Yes.” He had seen them board the ship with Windu. “Originally they had planned to request Palpatine had given up his emergency powers, so they were ready to leave anyways.

“When I got there, he was fighting Master Windu with a red lightsaber and the other Masters were already dead. I went to help him – Windu, of course – and then… Palpatine put his hand on my chest.” Anakin mimicked the action for their benefit, fingers splayed across the fabric. “And suddenly I was looking down at myself.”

When it was clear Anakin had reached the end of his story, the two Jedi shared a brief glance. Obi-Wan was first to respond.

“Well, that is certainly. ‘Complicatedly weird’, as you put it.”

A grim smile crossed his face. “Exactly. And seeing yourself walking around without your direction? Doing things that you would never do, killing.” His voice cracked on the word; he swallowed around it and continued. “Killing the people you’ve known for years. That there isn’t a thing you can do to stop it.”

“Stop yourself, you could not?” The first words that Master Yoda spoke to him since it all began. Not even accusatory, after hearing the strangeness that was the truth, yet he still recoiled from them and their implications.

“No. They couldn’t see me or hear me. When I tried to touch them I just… passed through. Like nothing.”

He gestured towards Obi-Wan as he spoke. If he had been anyone else, had not known Obi-Wan for so long as he had, then Anakin would have missed the pain that flickered across his face. Yet he was still him, had _grown up_ with the man and couldn’t miss that brief flash of anguish. He wanted to hold his husband close, reassure him that the Force wouldn’t let Palpatine’s betrayal stand unpunished, that it would seek balance against this tragedy.

Kriff, _his husband_. What had he thought when he first saw the security footage? Looking to him now revealed nothing (of course not, Anakin berated himself, he wouldn’t so easily reveal emotion in front of Yoda and most certainly not while he was grieving; his first instinct when pained was to push everything down and it was Anakin’s job to make sure that he bothered to process it like a healthy person), leaving Anakin to wonder how long it would take to wheedle the information out of him.

That was presuming he could even get off the planet, of course. It would be terrible if he were trapped on Coruscant for… who even knew how long. Hopefully no longer than his body lived, at least, but somehow he wouldn’t be surprised if he persisted past that point, either.

Yoda shook his head, the sudden movement scattering Anakin’s thoughts. “Matters now, it does not. Acting under the Chancellor, Darth Vader is. Stopped he must be.” Meaningfully he looked to Obi-Wan, continued, “Stopped, the Sith must be.”

Obi-Wan drew himself up, every inch the calm and commanding Jedi General he had been forced to become over the last few years. “Yes Master.”

And Anakin closed his eyes.

-

“When are you leaving?”

After following the other man back to his quarters, Anakin now stood in Obi-Wan’s doorway with his arms crossed over his chest while his husband packed away what meagre belongings he had. Mostly consisting of clothing, of course, a stocked medical kit, some spare lightsaber parts in case his current weapon was damaged or, Force forbid, destroyed during the fighting. Or lost, but that was less likely given the _who_ in question.

“Twenty-hundred hours. The men need some time to prepare themselves and the shuttles; we’ve been on shore leave so long, after all,” he answered only half-jokingly. Another square of folded synth-wool was set down into the open bag sitting on his narrow bed. “And if we leave later, then, barring any unforeseen disruptions, we will arrive during the early morning of our landing point.”

“Mm. That’s enough time to see you off properly, don’tcha think?”

The door silently slid shut behind Anakin as he properly entered the room and approached Obi-Wan, hands raised slightly in a silent request for permission to continue. He didn’t have to wait very long; his former Master fiddled with the bag for only a few moments, eventually deciding to replace it on the floor where it was safely out of the way.

“Very well Padawan.”

“Not your Padawan anymore.”

“Not your Master anymore.”

“You’ll always be my Master. You won’t be getting rid of me that easily.”

**Author's Note:**

> The prompt, as found in chapter two of minhui’s _Deviation_ , is below.  
>   
>  _ALSO i have the worst fucking plot bunny hounding me and i gotta get rid of it. idc if anyone uses it or not (if u do hmu bc i wanna read tht shit) i just need it Out Of My House_  
>  _anakin really truly dies when he becomes darth vader. everything that makes anakin anakin passes into the force and becomes a force ghost the moment he kneels and calls sidious his master. from then on, darth vader is haunted by the very pissed off ghost of anakin skywalker. luke and leia grow up knowing their dad as a glowing blue guy who really, really hates the sith. anakin also pesters obi-wan from beyond the grave. Thats All I Got Now Take It And Make It Leave_


End file.
